The necessary truth of any truth

Try googling "Russell's paradox" for attempts at solutions to such a word salad !

Welcome to A2K by the way, and note that some of us are pretty sceptical when it comes to Aristotelian logic. and the dichotomy of "subjective -objective".

You really ought to distinguish between necessarily every truth is true, and every truth is necessarily true. All you have to do is to notice where the necessarily operator appears. It is a matter of simple ambiguity. (Example: it is necessarily true that if Obama is president, then Obama is president. But it is not true at all (let alone necessarily true) that if Obama is president then necessarily, Obama is president, let alone that if Obama is president then Obama is necessarily president).

Your sentence, "necessarily, if Obama is president, then Obama is president" says nothing. Are you trying to teach me how to say nothing? I hope not. Why is it so hard for you to abandon the idea of a truth independent of you (of us)? Let me try again. You gave the very definition of a subjective truth: something we believe to be true. So there are, indeed, subjective truths. Modern scientists know in their guts that a subjective truth must be objectively true, so they are always going after that objectivity. And if they don't find it, then the necessary truth of any truth is denied, which causes their subjective truth to become false. There were many truths in the history of science, of which not much have survived to our days.

You really need to get to grips with Richard Rorty's adage "truth is what works", if you are going to commune with the guts of "modern scientists". For example, try discussing the "truth" of the proposition that "a positron is an electron travelling backwards in time!"

The statement "every truth must be true" looks to me like a perfect tautology. It's like saying, "All water is wet."

If "a truth" means "a true statement," then obviously "every true statement is true." The question really is whether a particular statement is true or false; calling it "a truth" before making that determination is begging the question.

As for "a true being," every being is true; untruth is the nonbeing of something falsely alleged to be.

Every truth must be true is not a tautology. In fact, it is false. It happens to be true that Quito is the capital of Ecuador, but it it certainly need not be true that Quito is the capital of Ecuador. Guyaquill (the second city of Ecuador) was considered at one time, but Quito was chosen instead. So, although it is true that Quito is the capital of Ecuador, there is no necessity that it is true, since it might very well have been false, as I just explained. However, you may be confusing the false statement (and hence, not a tautology) that every truth must be true, with a very different statement which is, in fact a necessary truth (a tautology). Now, that very different statement is, the following: It must be true that every truth is true. Now that statement is, of course, true. For example, it must be true that if the statement that Quito is the capital of Ecuador is true, then the statement that Quito is the capital of Ecuador is true. Now, of course, the fact that some other city might have been the capital of Ecuador, although true, is irrelevant to the statement that it must be that if Quito is the capital of Ecuador is true, then Quito is the capital of Ecuador is true. So, just to pin it down:

1. If P (some statement) is true, then P must be true.
2. It must be that if P is true, then P is true.

a. 1 is false (for some values of P)
b. 2. is true (for all values of P).
c. 1. does not follow from 2.

I hope that is cleared up for once and for all.

Oh yes, the phrase "true being" makes no more sense than "true table" does. Objects are neither true not false. Statement, or propositions are true of false, so the statement, that a particular table exists is true (or false). I still have no idea what "true being' means, though. Do you?

From the Compact Oxford English Dictionary:



It's been about 40 years since my last formal logic class, but even there a tautology may have been necessarily true, but it also was a vacuous statement, as "All water is wet" was meant to show.

I'm supposing that "a truth" is the same thing as "a true statement," but if there's a good reason for me to suppose otherwise, I'll give it consideration. In the meantime, all I'm saying is that "every true statement is true" is a tautology.

As for the "true beings" part, I'll reiterate that all beings are true, by which I mean, in this context, real. So to say "X is" automatically means the same as "X is real" or "X truly is." And "X is" is true if X exists, false if X doesn't exist. Long story short, in my view truth is the articulation of what is.

The problem with that , as philosophers from Kant to Heisenberg have pointed out, is that we never experience "the world" directly. In other words, "is-ness" is a function of human physiology and social agreement. And even if physiology remains constant, social agreement is subject to paradigmatic progression.

What you say about tautologies is quite true, only what you say does not appl9 to the statement, "every truth must be true" because that statement is not a tautology. If is, in fact, false, as I (among others) have explained. It looks like a tautology to you because you mix it up with a different statement that is a tautology. That statement you mix it up with is the statement, "It must be that every truth is a truth". That statement is a tautology. I really don't know how to put your mistake any clearer. It should be easy to see how the two different statements are different simply by inspection.

Those philosophers have certainly tried to point that out, you are right about that (if Heisenberg was a philosopher). But unless you can point out something that is not true (and I don't believe that you can) they pointed out nothing of the kind.
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Well, I'm not that concerned with "Kant to Heisenberg" - I'm a Neoplotinian, as I explained on the other forum, so I believe in a "ding an sich" and the possibility of knowing it in some way. I suppose "paradigmatic progression" means Platonism has been superseded, but I'm not ready to let go.

Left something out earlier, namely what I think is confusing me about "necessary" truth. What I'm arguing is that a true statement must be true, but the thing the statement describes may not be necessarily true. In your Quito example, if the statement "Quito is the capital of Ecuador" is to be true, then Quito necessarily must be the capital of Ecuador. But that doesn't mean that the statement "Quito is necessarily the capital of Ecuador" is true in any other context.

What they implied was that "truth" lies in the eye of the beholder, albeit "beholding" usually involves statistical agreement (not surprising since a common language is a priori to reported observation).

"Ding an Sich" to me implies naive realism which was a respectable position prior to relativity and quantum mechanics. I think concepts of "reality" have been forced to shift somewhat since 1905.

But I just gave you a lot of example of true statements that need not be true. It is true that Quito is the capital of Ecuador. but it need not be true that it is. Guyaquil might be the capital of Ecuador, and it nearly was. So, how can you say that a true statement must be true, when I have just given you an example of true statement that need not be true, and so, it is false that it must be true? What is true is that if it must be that if a statement is true, then it is true. You are just confusing the two. As Samuel Johnson said, "I can give you an argument, but I cannot give you understanding". You seem to want to persist in confusion. What does it mean for a statement to be necessarily true in just one context? Nothing, so far as I can see. All bachelors are unmarried males is necessarily true, but it is true in every context (whatever that means). That is just why philosopher and logicians say that necessary truths are truths that are true in every possible world.

"Truth is in the eye of the beholder" simply means that if a person believes that a statement is true, then that statement is true. But no one really believes such an outlandish thing. Does anyone? For that would imply that no person can ever make a mistake.

Slow down, dude. We're talking about two things, and I don't think we're really disagreeing, we just have to separate the two issues. The truth of the statement "Quito is the capital of Ecuador" is not dependent on the truth of the statement "Quito is necessarily the capital of Ecuador."

For the first statement to be true, Quito must in fact be the capital of Ecuador, so in that sense, it's necessary that Quito be the capital of Ecuador for the statement to be true. But that doesn't mean that it's required that Quito be the capital of Ecuador always and under all circumstances in order for the first statement to be true. If it happens that someday the capital of Ecuador is moved to Guayaquil, the first statement will no longer be true, and the second statement ("Quito is necessarily the capital of Ecuador") clearly was never true in the first place. That's what I mean by context.

Now I'd like to ask you to explain something: What is "every possible world?"

You didn't see my point yet, but you're getting closer. This is another possible misreading: that by understanding "?a truth"? as our belief on a true being, the assertion "?every truth must be true"? results in the necessary truth of whatever I believe. However, "?a truth"? is our belief on a true being insofar as that being is true. Hence, you can only misread the assertion "?every truth must be true"? "" as implying the necessary truth of whatever I believe, even if it is false "" by taking "?a truth"? as just our belief on "?a true being,"? regardless of whether that being is true or not: if you remember that "?a truth"? is our belief on a true being insofar as that being is true, then you find yourself just rephrasing the necessary truth of any truth: our belief on a true being, insofar as that being is true (every truth), must be the truth of that same, true being (must be true). This is hence an internal necessity "" one that comes from within truth itself "" as also a binary operator "" one that inextricably bonds together the two dimensions of truth: objective and subjective. Your necessity, on the other hand, is external, as also an unary operator. Did you get it now?

"Truth lies in the eye of the beholder"means there is no such thing as "objective reality". Truth is "what works" and "belief" is the degree of confidence is "what works". The fact that there is much statistical agreement in this matter has already been discussed. As for the status of propositional logic in all this, that is a mere mathematical exercise in set theory only occasionally involved in "confidence levels".

Sorry, I have to reject all of this. "Statistical agreement?" Please. How about: We're all looking at the same reality, so is it really a surprise that we draw similar conclusions?

Relativity and quantum mechanics are not philosophy, though one's attitude toward them may constitute a philosophical position. And even if "concepts of 'reality' have been forced to shift somewhat since 1905," I don't think reality has changed. The fact that you put scare quotes around "reality" says a lot.

That's it. I would say there are:
1) The necessary truth of any truth, which always applies.
2) The necessity of any truth, which depends both on the truth and on the context.
The first is an internal necessity, as also a binary operator. The second is an external necessity and an unary operator.